Used cars sales in top gear

Popular online platforms like Droom, CARS24, QuikrCars and Truebil have seen sharp sales spike in the range of 2x to 5x growth with even luxury used cars gaining traction.Nandini Sen Gupta | TNN | October 26, 2017, 19:03 IST

Chennai: This Diwali the used car market clocked top gear sales with online platforms seeing anything between 50-100% growth.

Popular online platforms like Droom, CARS24, QuikrCars and Truebil have seen sharp sales spike in the range of 2x to 5x growth with even luxury used cars gaining traction.

“The pre-Diwali to dhanteras period has seen a healthy spike of 30-50% for a period of 4 weeks. We have grown stronger than last year by 2x margin and on an industry level too, the jump in growth has been consistent,” said Vikram Chopra, CEO, CARS24.

Big online platforms like Droom, for example, have grown 5x this festive year (September 21-October 20, 2017) as compared to previous year (entire October 2016) with sales more skewed towards four wheelers than two wheelers.

“Our gross merchandise value has doubled last month to this due to the festive rush and the average sale price has also jumped as more cars were sold than two-wheelers. Last year 33% of overall sales was cars which has now jumped to 55%,” said Puneet Bhaskar, AVP, Droom.

Pent up demand has contributed to rising sales. “In the month of October, MoM growth has seen an uptick as people deferred buying decisions because of GST. This demand cumulated in the festive month of October,” said Shubh Bansal, co-founder & CMO, Truebil.

The launch rush in new cars help correct prices in used car market, he added.

“With so many new launches in new car segment, the prices of used cars of the same model have decreased,” said Bansal. For example, an old model used Swift Dzire price has dropped by 5-10% as new Swift Dzire has huge demand, he said.

Discounts in new cars helped supply and fuelled demand. “Heavy discounts offered by car companies made people sell their old cars to acquire new ones. This is evident from the 20% MoM increase in the inventory on QuikrCars since August. Top models sold on QuikrCars are easy to drive hatchbacks like i10, WagonR, Swift, Alto. Luxury cars demand also spiked up during festive season,” said Atul Tewari, COO, Quikr and head, QuikrCars.

The extent of festive rush for pre-owned cars becomes obvious from the fact that even financiers have clocked good disbursals.

“The used car loan segment grew at 75% month over month and the overall customer sentiment was very positive,” said Aditya Kumar, founder & CEO of Qbera.com.